'Reduce, Reuse & Recycle' - help with the 'Reduce' part please

[justkeepswimming]

We recycle everything we can in our recycling bin.
We compost everything we can in our compost bins.
We reuse everything we can think of/Freecycle stuff/pass it on to friends.

But we still feel that we throw away too much rubbish (2 black sacks a week, though they are not full, just our kitchen bin gets full so we empty it halfway through the week, so prob just over 1 full sack).
Dh and I were talking and he said we need to work on the Reducing part.

So, helpful tips on how and where to reduce our rubbish please

Extra info:
We have 2 LOs in nappies, ds1 (2yrs) is in disposables (sorry, hangs head in shame!) but ds2 (5mo) is in half and half disposable/washables.

We tried dishwasher liquid instead of tablets but DH didn't think it worked properly.

I think most of our rubbish is that sort of plastic wrap that most food comes wrapped in (ie cucumbers, pack of breadsticks, just for examples from lunchtime today!).

Look forward to getting some really useful tips, tia.

I was working in the waste industry when 'reduce/reuse/recycle' starting doing the rounds.

Reduce is intended to have two meanings.

Reduce the amount of waste you produce in the first place

AND (this is the bit people tend to forget)

reduce the space it takes up in landfill.

So don't put boxes in the bin whole, rip them up first, squash plastics down etc. If there is 'air space' in a container then fill it with other waste before putting in the bin.

DH puts empty margarine tubs, etc, in the bin with the lid on - could you 'ave a word please, StG

If you rinse out the big plastic milk containers at the end of your washing up, the warm water softens them so you can squash them down nearly flat.
We flatten tins too.
Any cereal boxes etc we keep one of them in the kitchen till its full of bits of paper/card, then put it in the recycling bag so overall they take less space and we don't have to rip them up. saves going out every 2 mins with bits of paper and card.
Biscuits in trays - buy cheaper biscuits they come in much less packaging and you get more biscuit for your money.
Nappies - if you buy a bigger sized washable nappy now and use them on your older child, you will have them ready for your younger child - and using them on more than one child saves you more money too.

Tell him to fill it full of scraps or something first WW, then he can be forgiven

Jumping on cereal packets and pizza boxes is one of the few small pleasures left in my sad life

I love making things as small as poss - I am always fishing out of the bin things like juice cartons, which have been given the feeblest of squeezes by a DS, and mangling it into a tiny square.

(When are they going to give us juice carton recycling facilities? And plastics type 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and other???)

I lurve my can crusher

I have to do that for him, StG - sigh - take icky tub from bin, remove lid, stuff full of ickiness and replace. Also have to go through the plastic bags he fills full of junk from his car and the wpbs, and remove paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and tin. I think he thinks that if it isn't a newspaper, a bottle or a beer can it doesn't count

For all those buying soap nuts, they are definitely cheaper on ebay, they work out at about £5 for 1/2 a kilo including postage. where as if you buy them prettily packaged from health food type places they are more like £12-£15 a 1/2 kilo including postage. A Kilo does about 130 washes apparently I think maybe a bit less than this but 500g bag lasts us about a couple of months if you are good about reusing the same nuts for 3 washes. I tend to buy about 2 kilos at once from that guy on ebay and they get sent by courier.

do you get through a lot of tetra packs because we have just noticed that our supermarket has gained a tetra pack recycling bank whereas we used to post them to a recycling place. It was handy as we get through loads of them.

Oooh, which supermarket, DM?

DH made chilli last night - bless him - this morning I had to remove from the bin 2 tomato cans and 2 kidney bean cans...

[uphill struggle emoticon]

Our Sainsbury's recycles Drink cartons, depends which county you're in, I think.

I thought that the rubbish lorries compressed the lot as they went, so they are doing the compression for us, anyway.
But compressing yourself is helpful in terms of not filing the wheely bin too often or using up more black plastic sacks and carrier bags.

Soap nuts SO didn't work for us, in terms of getting clothes clean. But I use soda crystals, to reduce the detergent use to what it would be if we had soft water. Also means less packaging use, hopefully.

Make your own yogurt, too, if you're partial to it.

we have a tetrapack recycling bin at our recycling bank up the road, they have also put in one for plastic bags now, just need them to do one for plastic bottles etc (they are collected by recycling collection round here, but the coucnil wont do recycling collection from our flat )

I thought that too flack? I hadn't really been bothering with flattening stuff because our fortnightly general wheelie bin is never remotely full.

A tip from expat for you liquid soap afficiondos. Obtain (either a pretty pot one or an existing branded one) a liquid soap dispenser, cut some slithers off a bar of soap, put in dispenser, add water, but top on, bingo, liquid soap. And you can use up old bar soaps that have gone manky round the edges this way. Dispose of the manky edges and cut the middle bit into slithers. Occasionally the tube blocks up but can be easily freed.

We have organic deliveries from River Swale. Boxes are sent back and reused by them. Most other packaging is cardboxes (mushrooms, strawberries etc) or paper bags (potatos, carrots etc).

cut dishwasher tabs in half.

flack - the wagons do compress, but there are always air voids. If the rubbish is compressed at every stage (consumer, wagon, waste treatment plant, sheer weight at landfill) then the waste volume can be reduced by more than 60%

(7 years out of the industry and head still full of stats. Shit, my life is boring )

There's another thread about recycling and one of the links on there was about not leaving lids on plastic bottles - it said that meant they couldn't be compressed but surely with enough pressure the bottle would pop (or the lid pop off)???

The lids should be off because they are normally made from a different type of plastic, not always suitable for recycling.

If it is recyclable then you can take the lid off, compress the bottle, then put the lid back on. Actually helps the bottle stay flat.

A milkman is fab - and they will deliver lots of other things too, like sacks of spuds, juice in reusable mik bottles, or a sack of organic local veg (you have to order the fruit/veg bags a week in advance, or a standing order, but if you can be that organised the quality was always excellent in mine and cheaper than any of the usual box schemes)

Try www.findmeamilkman.net/

When I'm well enough to cook I produce hardly any food-packaging waste, but when I need more pre-prepared stuff it mounts up. Even so, most of the ever-increasing household waste increase is disposable items, toys, crappy electric goods, etc. I try to rarely buy such things, and only get good quality ones that will last.

I've found dolly balls which you can get from Lakeland fantastic for reducing our washing powder use. They're a bit noisy but we use literally a tablespoon of powder at most for a really filthy wash and it comes out clean as anything. We also have the dryer balls so you needn't use any fabric conditioner and it cuts down on drying time, too. Obviously at this time of year you can use a washing line but in the winter they were great.

If you decide to take up growing veg, save loo roll insides to use as plant pots for seeds - they work brilliantly and you can plant them straight out in the garden with no need to remove the baby plant first.

Meal planning is also great for reducing waste (probably preaching to the converted here) - it does make you think about what you actually need to buy and when you need to use it. I'd also recommend buying unpackaged meat and fish from the counter instead of plastic packs from the chiller cabinet. The bags can be washed out and used as rubbish bags if you can be arsed or if you can't then they squash much smaller than a plastic tray.

Abel and Cole meat is really nice, too, as well as the veg/fruit.

Interestingly in the area where I live almost all of household rubbish is incinerated and used to create electricity rather than it going to landfill. I had a chat with someone who knows a lot about it with regards to recycling tetrapaks. Apparently if everything like tetrapaks and other dry waste get recycled in our area instead of going in household rubbish it makes it harder for the incinerator to be an efficient energy producer.
So as usual being green isn't as straight forward as it first seems.

Our local tetrapak collection bank has shut because kids were throwing lit matches in - great!

fascinating article on paper bags vs plastic bags vs degradable bags (veg box company talking about how irate customers get when they find a plastic bag in their box)

Recycle foil!

My kids have sandwiches in it for school - the same bit all week - they bring it home, I smooth it out and wip it and use it next day. Stick it in the blue (recycling) bin at the end of the week.

They are really into it. Think dd1 is actually becoming a bit of an eco-terrorist and must talk to her about ways to influence your friends!